Students "on Inclusion" or Inclusion in a Ukrainian (Post-Soviet, Deficit-Based) Way

• In Event: 66.063 - Disrupting Neoliberal, Deficit, and Colonial-Based Inclusion in the Post-Truth Era: Global Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives or Purposes

The purpose of this paper is to explore ways in which citizenship opportunities, education systems, and the cultural practices of teaching students with diverse abilities and needs are affected by the ideologies of normality and neoliberalism and the socio-cultural context of schooling in the post-truth era. Specifically, the study was concerned with the extent to which diverse learners’ citizenship praxis in Ukrainian schools was determined by the relationship among: (a) the notion of normality in conceptions of human nature; (b) application of neoliberal market-based standards to education; and (c) a country’s specific socio-cultural history. In such, I analysed the current practices of teaching students with disabilities in Ukraine and how government reform initiatives are shaped by the State’s Soviet-oriented vision and post-truth politics for what inclusive education should look like in Ukrainian schools.

Perspectives or Theoretical Framework(s)

The theoretical framework of this study suggests examining the impact of cultural and ideological struggles (i.e., the notion of normality, the market-based neoliberal agenda, and post-truth politics) on implementation of inclusive education in relationship with a country’s socio-cultural history (Artiles & Kozleski, 2007). In this paper, I used an equity-based model of inclusion (Kozleski & Waitoller, 2013), Skrtic’s critique of the special education field in the United States (Skrtic, 1991), and institutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977) to analyse educational policies in the post truth era, a post-Soviet school system, and ways in which teachers comply with (neoliberal, post-Soviet, deficit-based) regulations toward inclusion in Ukraine.

Methods

Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with administrators and educators from three elementary schools in north-western Ukraine. A document analysis was applied to examine educational policies toward inclusion. Qualitative data was coded using Corbin and Strauss’s (2014) coding strategies. This process was accompanied by writing memos which constituted narratives of how and why initial codes were linked to each other and consequently formed conceptual categories (Corbin & Strauss, 2014; Saldaña, 2015).

Results and Significance

Inclusive education is meant to be a platform for the equitable redistribution of educational resources and opportunities in schools (Waitoller & Kozleski, 2013). But in Ukrainian context, it was distorted into an individual, place-based service grounded in a deficit-based understanding of individual differences. The findings demonstrate that through educational policies, the state frames inclusive education as a proxy for special education. The three themes (disability framing, living in bureaucracies, and understanding inclusive education) that emerged explicated the relationship between a country’s socio-cultural history, its education system and societal perceptions towards disability in Ukraine (Rasell & Iarskaia-Smirnova, 2013). The Soviet defectology (special education) philosophy to surveil, medicalize children is deeply internalized by education professionals in Ukraine. In this way, state government translates inclusion into a technocratic process that is achieved through bureaucratization and centralization of services, and specialization of teachers based on disability category (see Skrtic, 1991).

Reframing the discourse on (dis)ability and inclusion in countries, whose socio-cultural history makes it particularly vulnerable to the ideologies of normality and neoliberalism, is an especially important undertaking.

Author

• Inna Stepaniuk, The University of Kansas